The preferred proppants for gas or oil wells, at depths where silica sand is unsatisfactory due to the overburden pressure, are sintered bauxites containing from 3 to 40% of silica. The strongest proppants are made from relatively high purity bauxite. Higher silica content raw materials are used, however, to provide a lower density proppant with a sacrifice in strength and chemical stability as more silica is present in the product. Such proppants have been made from high silica bauxite with a silica content of 15 to 19% and from mixtures of bauxite or diaspore clay with higher silica content. This invention relates to proppants containing 10% or more silica with alumina.
Such proppants are made by pelletization of a mix in an intensive mixer and are taught in Australian Pat. No. 521930 issued Oct. 19, 1982, U.S. co-pending application Ser. No. 06/628,015, filed July 5, 1984, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,427,068, to Kennecott Corporation, or by a spray granulation method, as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,440,866.
Such proppants generally contain mullite (3Al.sub.2 O.sub.3 --2SiO.sub.2), alumina, and glass. Although the glass phase can be minimized by employing mixes of lower silica content, some glass phase is always present. Such glasses are undesirable in that they are more subject to corrosive attack by aqueous brines (present in the wells), under the influence of an applied stress, that is, in particular are subject to stress corrosion, leading to a decrease, with time, in the permeability of the proppant pack in the well. This decrease in permeability occurs both in the proppants containing 10 to 19% silica and even more so in the higher silica products and is a result of the stress activated corrosive strength degradation (i.e. failure) of ceramic proppants.